Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Trinity Sunday

Reflection on Trinity Sunday, Year A

I baptize you—yes you, who wants or whom others want to be a disciple of Christ or at least a member of this church or other Christian body or to be called a baptized Christian when appropriate— In the Name of the Creator and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There’s that Trinity thing again, pastor says it at the weekly benediction as well as at the end of heavy-duty prayers; it must be important, it even has its own Sunday, but does any mortal really grasp what early fathers of holy church had in mind when they made belief in Trinitarianism a test of faith?

Or was it meant only to be a mark of faith, an enigma bound in mystery so securely that we can only repeat over and over: Creator—okay some still say Father— Son and Holy Spirit (does anyone still say Ghost?)—so we know and we hope God knows too we are speaking of the Holy Parent Jesus knew, lived, and taught, he part of the Trio dancing across eternity cajoling us on to the dance floor too wanting us to hear the heavenly beat, do more than tap our toes and hum along, get up, join the romp of living up and down and around with history’s most famous gospel rock group God Son Spirit except they are not playing in history; their greatest hits, new releases, available now wherever we are whomever we are, whomever we love, whatever our ancestry—indeed as Meister Eckhart of blessed memory said long ago, Creator/Parent laughed, and the Son was born, then the two of them laughed and the Spirit was born. When all three laughed, the human one was born.

Whether we understand or not —its all in the family, each one of us making a fourth not for bridge but for life.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Ghost). This the formula by which all things holy are done in Christian contexts. But what does it mean? Does anyone really know? Trinity Sunday—first after the Day of Pentecost–is intended by liturgical planners to help us understand the ancient doctrine containing all the power of our faith. But what kind of power is it? A cleric intones the words, all respond Amen, seeming to say the deed, whatever it is, is now done.

But what if the Trinity is not done, what if instead of finality it is just the beginning? What if that Blessed three-sided family is always on the move in a dance of divine proportions, touching, engaging each other and all living beings in an endless do-si-do, moving themselves and us to embrace and part over and over to create new life, new meaning, without end?

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And more, why does it have to be Father, white Father with white beard at that? If the Creator is old why is he, or she, not black—the first humans were Black in Africa, and their parent surely could be, should be it seems to me, the same. And why not mother, does not a woman give birth to all life of all sorts? Holy Mother God, an ample bosomed Parent in whose loins all are birthed and at whose breasts all are suckled! But more than a birthing, nursing machine, She sets the beat of the dance, teaches the steps, commissions her two cohorts to go forth to touch, empower, raise up, renew all life .

And they, Blessed Son and Holy Spirit, eager always to engage life, on the move, being fed and taught by Mother, bring fierce truth and energy everywhere whether invited or not, even as they know rejection and avoidance from all at least some of the time. But they do not stop, when dismissed or slain they do not truly leave or die but await a new opening to heal the breach and recreate the love of life they carried and taught the first time, indeed every time, world without end.

Blessed Son is male, with penis and all that signs maleness, going forth among us from time immemorial to teach and counsel and lead, daring to be what no man before or since has been or will be.

Could then Holy Blessed Spirit be some of both, Mother and Son, transcending, indeed expanding, preciously paltry ideas of gender? So that where She/He goes we are impregnated and birthed at the same time, to join the endless dance, the do-si-do of eternal creation, growing, when we listen to the divine beat, in spiritual strength, claiming our holy origins, unafraid to be really alive from the soul out to pulsing fingertips and toes, whirring brain energy seeking not stasis but vibration that moves all life to be in relation with Holy Mother God and all She creates and nurtures.

In the Name of the Mother, Blessed Son, and Holy Spirit, may it be so, and more, may we not miss the dance!